Todd Gitlin’s Supersaturation, Research Paper Example

Supersaturating or the Media torrent and Disposable felling

Getlin who is a professor and has specialized in journalism and culture, analyses and gives his finding on the reasons and consequences on why we spent much of our time being swayed and glued to communication, information and entertainment by the media. We spent a lot of time with the media to the extend that the rate at which the torrent of songs, images, stories etc get to us in a very high speed in that in some way we get saturated with it but still we don’t avoid  it but come up with different ways of adjusting to the situation. For example changing of channels.

He says that the media is one of the things that have taken away our freedom. He argues out in away to suggest that the media doesn’t have a negative effect on people by stealing their freedom but it’s the people that are misusing it and are not giving it time. He goes a head to explain how we end up being absorbed to the media, the effects and impacts the media has on us especially on the children and how we should try to avoid it and protect our children from being trapped in the same.

Getlin related Vermeerrs painting to the media in a way that his work was taken to be domestic scenes, or shootings, advertisements on the media or movies, then he would have this displayed against a background of images just as the way he did with the paintings in the rooms with different shades. Also relating his work in terms of scenes on the screen, he included the sound tracks on the same. In relation to the Vermeers case on space, that is the wealthier burghers, the living space was set aside from working space but in this world of today, the homes have been raided with a vengeance as a result of the Medias profusion.

Vermeers painting on The Concert, Blaise Pascal, his main worry was the power that could detract the French loyalties who spent most of their leisure time watching delights and games so that they didn’t sit idle. In the modern world, that is the Gentlin world, almost everybody no matter their financial class in their respective countries, the media still offers the right of choice.

In the day-to-daylife, the things we come across every now and then, such as cars, clothes, tools form part of our life but we tend to ignore them. These are our culture and we grow in it, images and sounds will always be with us whether we like it or not. Raymond Williams says that television is not just pictures that are put on the screen to be watched but a flow, drama after drama that is included into the rhythms of our lives. In the past drama was a festival, shown only in some seasons or important occasions but nowadays its part of our daily lives.

Geltlin takes the world as a place where people like being free and enjoy themselves hence the introduction of the media and other forms of communication was just the thing, they needed to explore the thing they love. And now that it was what people needed, they went ahead and overdid it and turned the media to being their world.

He says that this behavior comes up because of the way children are brought up. Children spent most of their time watching and go ahead to watch what’s beyond their age and minds. They become addicted to the extend they prefer the media than going to school. It’s believed to be a kind of a mental health problem as once you into it, it’s very hard to get out of the system.He quantifies his argument by getting the statistics that watching television is the dominant leisure activity of the Americans, which is an average of 40 percent of a person’s free time.

He praises the media for its role in education and entertainment especially to the children and a form of relaxation. He went ahead to list the negative effects the media has on us and mostly the children. He says that obesity in young children is one of the effects of watching too much television. It has a great impact on the character of children like for example; children who like watching violent events like murder tend to have the impression that the world is evil and get scared (Todd, p60). The only way of trying to help this is to limit the amount of time the children watch TV and the types of programs they watch. Also setting time aside to sit with the kids and offer some guidelines is very important.

Getlin goes back to time and try to explain how people become obsessed with the media. The homes were full of paintings that were pleasing and showed taste and prosperity and also amusement. This pleasure in the paintings at that time is what led to the present pleasure and obsession to the media. Though at that time, people were not into the pictures that much, the today’s media torrent is believed to have started as a result of the coming of technology to the end of the nineteenth century. The heart of this modern way of life which is information-based is what life today has turned to be.

In his closing speech, he cleans himself out by saying that he may not have the answers to all the questions asked about the images, sounds and stories. He suggests that people stop this trend of torrent by the media and start imagining of the whole thing in a different way, this time round considering the media in a more serious manner. The media should no longer be taken as just as a collection of social problems but something that steers the whole life. If we do this, we will not only find a temporary solution to the supersaturation but solve the entire issue for good.

I agree with Geltins argument. The media nowadays has taken charge of most of the people life. The media has been used as the best way of reaching most if not all people in the world. The above has been misused in ways such as inclusion of obscene movies and songs which are addictive.The same media has been used as link to corrupt citizen’s mind, politically, socially and economically. It’s also so addictive that most people can’t do without it.

Work cited

Todd Gitlin. Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. Holt Paperbacks, 2007:56-99